[Simon Hunt]

I like a good long Dylan thread, too.

Jim--I like Bruce, also, although the idea of preferring him to Dylan is ludicrous to me. I think the Boss would find it ludicrous himself. On Greetings from Asbury Park, in particular--a record I like a lot--he is quite clearly Dylan-besotted; he has admitted as much. I like the story that when they first met, a moment captured in a photograph, Dylan intimidated Springsteen by saying, "So. I hear you're the new me..."

I'd put Springsteen, maybe, in my personal second-tier of great song-poets. With those in my first tier--Richard Thompson, PJ Harvey, Tom Waits, Shane MacGowan, plenty of others--I sometimes get to thinking, Yeah, that's as good as a Dylan song. But then I put on a Dylan record and realize otherwise, thinking, Nobody's ever written a song that good... And THEN, sometimes, a better one comes on later on the record...

With regard to the perceived drop-off in Dylan's work after the golden 60s period (yeah, sure, but all of Blood on the Tracks, most of Desire, half of Infidels, a lot of the miraculous 90s-00s trilogy... Not to mention what the Basement Tapes and the Bootleg Series reveal about how much incredible stuff he wasn't even putting out)... That same Bruce Springsteen has talked often about how the difference is only significant because of the titanic strength of the earlier work. Any of Dylan's "lesser albums," he has opined, would have been hailed as the work of the "New Dylan" if it hadn't had the misfortune of being released by the old one...

Can we talk about Robbie's solo work, too? Maybe not a great album yet, but not a terrible one either--and the first two had some great stuff on...